The Californian Redwood

What lets a tree like the California red wood grow so high? The theory is the amount of precipitation the pacific northwest - from Northern California to Southern Alaska - receives relative to other areas on Earth.



The Sequoia Sempervirens grows 10 feet a year, absorbing water and Co2 as it builds itself to its gargantuan size.

This mammoth force of life stuns the mind into submitting to the awesome wonder of creation. The word itself - Creation - cannot help but slip off the tongue when taking in the profound beauty of these living beings.

Will the world of tomorrow, or the Humans of 2150, take in a world full of new growth redwoods - helping to soak up the excess C02 released into the atmosphere by Humanities industrial activity?

Just imagine. As the ices-sheets on Greenland continue melting, and the west Antarctic ice-shelf slips closer and closer to falling into the ocean, a strange set of feedback loops may appear whereby large coastal sections of Antarctica become green.

There are many control parameters on temperature, but the three most important ones are

- water vapor
- Co2
-albedo effect

Water vapor, of course, is water in gaseous form, itself constituting what we mean by 'humidity'. As more C02 concentrates in the atmosphere, the average global temperature gradually increases, and self-organizing rhythms of nature are all of a sudden "met" with a brand new form of perturbation (disruption): Human interference in chemical transformation processes between the 4 geospheres - Oceans, Lithosphere, Atmosphere and Biosphere. For 4.2 billion years, the planet has self-organized in such a way as to create these 4 zones, with the 4th one, the biosphere, harboring the potential for a being that could severely disrupt the natural rhythms.

Of course, one could legitimately argue that all sorts of unexpected catastrophes have disrupted the planet in the past, and I would agree with you. We are very much like an asteroid impact from without, except this time the destructive force is borne from within - from our suboptimal living routines that 'stunt' our forebrain growth, and leaves us in maturity with deeply ingrained habits that, coupled with an ambivalent social world that stimulate consumption, lead us to act in ways that, in our collective impact, will be deeply disruptive to our planets biosphere.

Water vapor, Co2 and the albedo effect are all actually coupled to one another. As co2 concentrates, runoff rates from glaciers and ice-sheets incrementally rises, leading to a loss of albedo - which together, helps deflect as much as 40% of the potential energy of the sun. With loss of that "ice-box", the so-called "refrigerator effect" may be loss, and the planets temperature system work in the opposite direction - towards heating, as opposed to a stable binary system.

With less albedo, and more water, more light energy is taken into the world's oceans, which will also mean more evaporation, and thus, more rainfall. For the ocean, more c02 continues to mean more acidity, which has a destructive effect on the oceans bio-diversity. Climate Change may strike the oceans hardest, even if it may be a gain to plant life on land. More rain and more humidity means more energy for growth. And no tree stands to benefit - and serve more efficiently as a co2 vacuum, than the Californian redwood.

I found the following National Geographic piece very moving, and deeply inspiring about the Human future, in terms of giving back to nature what we intemperately took and thought we could get away with. I've also been watching a lot of Treehouse Masters, and, I must say, I want tree house, preferably somewhere high-up in a giant Sequoia.

a reply to: Astrocyte
I have been blessed with the opportunity to experience these awesome creatures of Earth. I really would like to go back.


The coastlines nearby are quite dangerous as well.

Awesome topic, love these trees. As far as I know naturally we do not have these in Washington State as they go as far as a part of Southern Oregon. Wish they could be here, though am guessing the temperature differences, being outside of the Sierra Nevadas, and more rainfall comparatively, affects that. Alaska has the Sequoiadendron giganteum.

What an awesome man and project! Thank you so much for sharing this! Trees are so beautiful and these are just stunning!
It's a shame that we have lost so many, but with this project there is now hope for many, many more.

One of the few things we missed when we moved from California was Calaveras Big Trees. Although we have a smaller version in North Idaho, the Ancient Grove of Cedars.

There is definitely something magical with these old growth trees. We are surrounded by trees where we live now, it is amazing all the life one tree provides to its surrounding environment. The sweet smell of the trees this time of year is wonderful.

I would love to have a redwood sprout...

Wonder if it would grow in this climate...lol

If a tree falls in a forest...

Out of sight, out of mind I suppose mon frère.

a reply to: Astrocyte

Sequoia National Park was a land of wonder for me.

As these majestic redwoods hold an integral place in our planet's collective ecosystem, the redwood trees themselves are microcosms of life, and almost as a world unto their own. These trees harbor such diversities of life, consequently, creating their own redwood orientated habitats. Some creatures will never leave the canopy or trunk of a single during their entire life cycle.

There is much awe and wonder to be found with these trees

a reply to: Akragon
They sell Redwood sprouts like in every small business in the area. I bought one when I was out there and brought it home. I could not keep it alive. It needs to be like constantly wet. Maybe a timed mister for every hour would keep it going better.

You can buy them online though. Beware, the will destroy any yard you put them in if you plan on keeping them growing.

WARNING! Even though a redwood is an awesome tree, Sequoia sempervirens is NOT a good choice for a suburban lot if you wish to remain a good neighbor. Even in average soil it will quickly overwhelm the surrounding area. After growing an extensive root system, a juvenile tree will generally add five or six feet to its height each year. It is easily capable of reaching a height of 120 to 150 feet during a person's lifetime. That's fifteen stories high.

The year-round heavy shade will not allow grass to grow and landscaping will be limited to shade-loving plants such as ferns. Winters underneath a redwood tree are cold and wet. Redwoods control the growth of other plants around them by 'bombing' them -- dropping chunks of wood and branches on competing plants (and your house.) The area around a mature redwood resembles a war zone. It is not possible to leave the paths in the redwood parks without having to clamber over the mess on the ground. The redwood is also by nature a messy tree, dropping a third of its branchlets each year as it renews them, clogging gutters and drains.

I have redwoods in the yard, one problem here is People move here and then hate the redwood mess dropping all year so they cut them dow. This area went from a forest with a few houses to houses with my trees being the only ones left but for a few in a mile radius. It is the same everywhere PEOPLE, we want the sun we want clean roofs we don't like redwood droppings that are acidic and don't let anything but ferns grow, the branches break all the time and redwoods have shallow roots, without a good group to hold each other up they fall over.
To many people think they want to live in the beautiful forests and then learn it takes more effort and a need to conform instead the cut, burn and doze.

a reply to: SeaWorthy

That is an astonishing thing.

The people who do these sorts of things are existentially dissociated from the conditions of their existence: they see the pinecones, don't like what they see, and then decide killing a hundred or thousand year old being is preferable because they want to beautify their town like other towns in other areas.

These stupid and false diseases states of consciousness are in fact the mental version of what in biology we call 'viruses'. The future of human psychology will properly recognize how people form their perceptions, which means it'll become necessary to realize why the stupid "percept" that says (or means) "these pnecones are ugly", only forms because an idealization - an image your brain associates with social power i.e. 'style' - compels you to devalue the life of a very old organism in favor of a superficially intrusive wish to destroy a naturally evolved ecosystem and put in its place other species.

Humans tend to fail to recognize that nature assumes the paths of least resistance while at the same time increasing the maximum level of diversity. It may even be that interacting self-organizing systems interlink into one another via the 'golden mean' - which is how different wave lengths of the brain interact.

I take the arborists understanding - or what he experienced - very seriously, and I see no other reason other than the fear of shame - or the reflexive habit of dissociating from a content that arouses shame towards something else that takes on meaningful "substance" within your developing narrative that helps maintain an inner sense of relaxation/comfort - that keeps this cynicism and nihilism alive.

I have gone "very down' the rabbit hole in my own life - in my personal study, as well as personal transformation as a person - to feel perfectly okay in saying "everything is meaningful" - which has the intended implication of "my experiences are real, my consciousness is real, and my life and being, or stream of experience, is probably eternal, never-ending, but not without any sensible intentionality - clearly, play, fun, awe, love, connections, discovery, exploration - etc - is fun. Fun - being - is fun. Creativity - which may be never-ending, is freaking awesome.

This is not a new idea - what's new is the importance of testing our ideas against observation and experiment i.e. the scientific method - which is precisely what the Dalai Lama has been promoting for the 40 years - the man is refreshingly intelligent and open-minded!

The most beautiful thing, I think, is a reformed attitude towards death. It's so true - experientially, how important the prospect of death becomes in redirecting our focus to the value and meaning of the relationships which enliven us - from other people, to nature, to these enormous redwood groves which I hope to one day see. Relationships are real. Relationships - symmetry - precedes the emergence of a function. This is an iron-clad law of nature - inviolable.

a reply to: Astrocyte

The people who do these sorts of things are existentially dissociated from the conditions of their existence: they see the pinecones, don't like what they see, and then decide killing a hundred or thousand year old being is preferable because they want to beautify their town like other towns in other areas.

The strange part is that they move here BECAUSE of the beauty of the big trees the ambiance of the cones and needles on the ground. Most come from cities and had no idea that removing a 20-inch thick layer of redwood needles that are prickly and removing them from the roof and so on is work they decide they want the sun instead. They want gardens instead of ferns and trees and shade and moss.

a reply to: SeaWorthy

Maybe, I don't know, we should develop the habit of explaining what certain communities - and the ecosystems they are built within - are like to live within.

This ridiculous and ignorant habit of just moving in because of the big trees, to then feel entitled to change the ecosystem because we don't like what we see when the trees drop their needles or cones, is obnoxious, and actually, from a larger perspective, cruel as well.

More thought needs to be put into moving, but then again, with the way capitalism structures our priorities, people are always "needing", because they are overly stressed in their living to be supported in making moral judgements about the things they desire and do.

This is partly why I am so eager to get other people to recognize how protecting nature or protecting the quality of our living is fundamentally wedded to the principles and values of the larger culture which constrains and channels what we feel, think, and do. Killing trees in general should never be something we do without some understandable Human need. The "need" in this situation, however, is superficial, impetuous, and tragic from the perspective of biological diversity, never mind the spiritual "anchoring" that legitimately activates the Human beings affective systems when we experience ourselves walking within those groves, in relation to the monstrous size and thus 'power' of the trees.